204
H. von Storch, J. S ¨
undermann, and L. Magaard
where the Institut f¨ ur Meereskunde as well as the Geological Institute were located,
I found Georg W¨ ust and I told him my story. When I had finished he said, “well
that’s nice. Now I have a student”. That’s how it started with me. He arranged for an
exchange of student places which was possible at that time. In the summer of 1948 I
went up to Kiel.
There comes to mind the story about my dissertation. After a year or so I asked
W¨ ust, I would like to make a Ph.D. and he said, “fine, let us do. There is someone in
the German Hydrographic Institute who has an instrument that measures turbidity in
the ocean and you just take the instrument and go out to sea and measure more often
than anybody has measured with it. And you will find something new.
2 Dr. Krey has
worked with the instrument, go and see him.” I had to calibrate the instrument. When
talking with Krey about it, he gave me two big volumes of colloid chemistry which I
had never heard anything about. I put them in the lowest drawer on my desk and never
opened them until I had my Ph.D.
3 I didn’t intend to do anything about chemistry,
but he thought that the substances that were in the ocean and would be measured by
the light were mainly of chemical nature.
Anyway let us go on. You asked what I learned from W¨ ust. It’s basically the
general overview, to look at large connections, not at the details, but to integrate
things, to see the big picture.
You asked for the little story about an attachment to a bicycle. We students were
somewhat annoyed that we had to carry boxes of water samples and instruments from
the institute to the research ship and back. We wanted some easier way of transportation. W¨ ust approved of that and told us to buy a little cart to hang behind a bicycle.
The university administration did not approve that. It was not a scientific instrument.
We came to use the name “transporteur” which is actually a measuring device used
by surveyors to fix angles on charts. We submitted that to the administration; it was
approved as ‘transporteur’ and the bicycle dealer actually sold us one of the two wheel
carts to hang behind a bicycle. That is the way, how we misled the administration.
Thank you very much for this advice. We keep that in mind.
You keep that in mind. That is good.
You finished your studies at the university with receiving your Ph.D. Does it mean
that you never had a classical examination at the university?
Not really, except for a few little examinations. As a student in the natural sciences
I had to take one course in Germanistics. It was a seminar on an obscure German
poet, who had written a lot of novels and we were supposed to read all these novels.
When examination came I had read none, not a single one. About twelve students
were sitting around a big table with the professor and he started to ask the first one
2 See also page 212.
3 Wyrtki, K., 1950: ¨
Uber die Verteilung der Tr¨ ubung in den Wassermassen der Beltsee und ihren Zusammenhang mit den hydrographischen Faktoren. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. Kiel, FRG, 49 pp.
H. von Storch, J. S ¨
undermann, and L. Magaard
where the Institut f¨ ur Meereskunde as well as the Geological Institute were located,
I found Georg W¨ ust and I told him my story. When I had finished he said, “well
that’s nice. Now I have a student”. That’s how it started with me. He arranged for an
exchange of student places which was possible at that time. In the summer of 1948 I
went up to Kiel.
There comes to mind the story about my dissertation. After a year or so I asked
W¨ ust, I would like to make a Ph.D. and he said, “fine, let us do. There is someone in
the German Hydrographic Institute who has an instrument that measures turbidity in
the ocean and you just take the instrument and go out to sea and measure more often
than anybody has measured with it. And you will find something new.
2 Dr. Krey has
worked with the instrument, go and see him.” I had to calibrate the instrument. When
talking with Krey about it, he gave me two big volumes of colloid chemistry which I
had never heard anything about. I put them in the lowest drawer on my desk and never
opened them until I had my Ph.D.
3 I didn’t intend to do anything about chemistry,
but he thought that the substances that were in the ocean and would be measured by
the light were mainly of chemical nature.
Anyway let us go on. You asked what I learned from W¨ ust. It’s basically the
general overview, to look at large connections, not at the details, but to integrate
things, to see the big picture.
You asked for the little story about an attachment to a bicycle. We students were
somewhat annoyed that we had to carry boxes of water samples and instruments from
the institute to the research ship and back. We wanted some easier way of transportation. W¨ ust approved of that and told us to buy a little cart to hang behind a bicycle.
The university administration did not approve that. It was not a scientific instrument.
We came to use the name “transporteur” which is actually a measuring device used
by surveyors to fix angles on charts. We submitted that to the administration; it was
approved as ‘transporteur’ and the bicycle dealer actually sold us one of the two wheel
carts to hang behind a bicycle. That is the way, how we misled the administration.
Thank you very much for this advice. We keep that in mind.
You keep that in mind. That is good.
You finished your studies at the university with receiving your Ph.D. Does it mean
that you never had a classical examination at the university?
Not really, except for a few little examinations. As a student in the natural sciences
I had to take one course in Germanistics. It was a seminar on an obscure German
poet, who had written a lot of novels and we were supposed to read all these novels.
When examination came I had read none, not a single one. About twelve students
were sitting around a big table with the professor and he started to ask the first one
2 See also page 212.
3 Wyrtki, K., 1950: ¨
Uber die Verteilung der Tr¨ ubung in den Wassermassen der Beltsee und ihren Zusammenhang mit den hydrographischen Faktoren. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. Kiel, FRG, 49 pp.